SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The Trump administration has said DOGE is targeting waste and fraud in the federal government.
However, some of the cuts are impacting South Dakotans. Senator Mike Rounds says his staff saw three times more people reaching out to his office with concerns and questions in the month of February.
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Senator Rounds says his office is currently working on 139 different cases involving South Dakotans impacted by cuts being made by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Rounds says waste and fraud need to be rooted out, but he would prefer Doge use a scalpel approach rather than a hammer. Rounds’ office has fielded a lot of concerns as Federal Programs are cut back, for instance a nurse called after a National Institutes of Health website for cancer patients was taken down.
“She called in and said what am I supposed to do, I come to work, we’ve got people who are in cancer treatments and use the protocols on the website and its gone, shut down… help! So we went in and made come contacts and I don’t know if it was our office or somebody else’s office but, clearly someone was able to get in and the website has been put back up and is operational again,” said Rounds.
Senator Rounds cited a lot of misinformation floating around on the internet. For instance concerns that social security could be cut. He is confident that won’t happen.
“Nobody is cutting any benefits, anything like that,” said Rounds. “There have been some cases of fraud and abuse that they are finding. that means more money in the trust fund, remain in the trust fund, those are good things. That’s one of the things DOGE has found . But we are not cutting benefits for social security recipients.”
As more cuts some in Washington DC, Rounds encourages South Dakotans with concerns to reach out to his office.
“And we will do our best to directly handle those situations on a case by case basis,” he said.
While his staff fielded about three times the volume of calls and messages in the month of February, Rounds says some of those were from people wanting to give their input on President Trump’s cabinet nominees. He also expects the number of calls for help in March to be higher than normal.
